CONCLUSION. 311 



which is conveyed to our minds, put within our brain 

 a little feeble emanation from the thing itself — if we 

 come within their reach. This being once put there, 

 will -remain as it were dust, till dusted out, or till it 

 decay, or till it receiYe accession of new vibrations. 



The vibrations from a pat of butter do, then, actu- 

 ally put butter into a man's head. This is one of the 

 commonest of expressions, and would hardly be so com- 

 mon if it were not felt to have some foundation in 

 fact. At first the man does not know what feeling or 

 complex of feelings to employ so as to docket the vibra- 

 tions, any more than he knows what word to employ 

 so as to docket the feelings, or with what written 

 characters to docket his word ; but he gets over this, 

 and thenceforward the vibrations of the exterior object 

 (that is to say, the thing) never set up their characteristic 

 disturbances, or, in other words, never come into his 

 head, without the associated feeling presenting itself 

 as readily as word and characters present themselves, 

 on the presence of the feeling. The more butter a 

 man sees and handles, the more he gets butter on the 

 brain — till, though he can never get anything like 

 enough to be strictly called butter, it only requires the 

 slightest molecular disturbance with characteristics like 

 those of butter to bring up a vivid and highly sympa- 

 thetic idea of butter in the man's mind. 



If this view is adopted, our memory of a thing is 

 our retention within the brain of a small leaven of the 

 actual thing itself, or of what qud us is the thing that 

 is remembered, and the ease with which habitual 

 actions come to be performed is due to the power of 



